Justice Scalia Teaches at Michele Bachmann's Constitution School

Yesterday, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia traveled to the Capitol to teach a class about the Constitution to members of Congress, led by controversial Tea Party caucus chairwoman Michele Bachmann. Justice Scalia's participation in Bachmann's Constitution school has prompted a heated debate about the proper relationship between Supreme Court justices and political leaders. But the real debate that should be raging is not about judicial ethics, but about the dubious vision of the Constitution that Scalia and leaders of the Tea Party will be discussing.

As Jonathan Turley pointed out in the Washington Post this weekend, while Supreme Court Justices across the ideological spectrum have taken on increasingly prominent public roles, Scalia has become a true "celebrity justice." But Scalia's pugnacious celebrity is in service of a distorted and bizarre reinterpretation of the Constitution championed by the Tea Party movement.

Although the Tea Party seeks to wrap the Constitutional founding in religious doctrine and intention, this view conveniently ignores the Establishment Clause, the clause forbidding religious tests for public office, and the fact that neither the Bible nor God is mentioned in the Constitution's text. Meanwhile, the Tea Party's Constitution offers very few of the hard-won protections ensuring equal rights and liberties for all Americans, and all but eliminates the power of government to protect and empower its citizens in interstate commerce. Tea Party candidates across America in 2010 also called for repeal of the 16th Amendment (making federal income taxation possible), the 17th Amendment (providing for direct popular election of U.S. Senators), and parts of the 14th Amendment.

Bachmann's Constitution classes are not so much an introduction to the founding documents, but to a new interpretation of the Constitution that mirrors the Tea Party's radical political agenda.